Baby, come home
by theboardwalkbody
Summary: Inspired by Fall Out Boy's "Jet Pack Blues". After a rough night and a fight with Carolyn, Arnold has to sort out some of his thoughts.


It was one of those dismal nights; rainy, cold, and overall lonely. His evening bankrupted him and when he returned to his apartment early, though only mere hours from dawn, he found his wife still up and waiting for him. He didn't mean to argue with her, and he didn't mean half the things he said to her but his anger, his shame, and his hurt were still hot. Within the hour he was walking back out the door and on to the street. The rain was pouring down incessantly, each drop so cold it stung, and he pulled his coat tighter around his neck and shoved his hands in his pockets. He made it a block down the street before he heard her running after him, calling his name. Not once did he turn back to face her, he couldn't, not after what he had said to her, or after what she had said to him.

"Arnold, wait!" she yelled out. "Come back!"

He kept walking, picking up his pace, but only marginally. Maybe part of him did want to turn around, but a larger part of him needed to be elsewhere for the moment and that part of him was winning. She still hadn't caught up to him by the time he reached the street corner and hailed a passing cab. The car stopped and he hopped inside, slamming the door shut as soon as he was sitting. "Just go," was all he instructed of the cabby. The car pulled away from the curb and started down the otherwise deserted street. He ventured one glance into the car's side-view mirror and saw her. His wife, his confidant, his everything. She was standing on the sidewalk under the streetlamp in her long black coat, already drenched from the pouring rain.

"Baby, come home!" she cried out to him. Tears blending in with the pouring rain.

He turned away from the mirror, he couldn't bare looking at her standing there waiting for him knowing full well he was not going back. Adding guilt to his cocktail of bad feelings he sighed and rested his head against the window. For a while the cabby drove him around the city aimlessly as he sat there, silently, staring out window at the sleeping city. Not a soul was out on the street, at least if they were they were hidden from him. The lights from signs, streetlights, and lamps reflected off the soaked pavement and cement sidewalks, the colors blurring against the rain on his window. All the while he kept hearing her voice calling out to him over and over again. 'Baby, come home.' kept ringing in his ears violently. He closed his eyes, tired of the city outside the cab. "Drop me off here," he said.

The cab pulled over to the curb and he paid the cabby and got out. The rain still had not let up. He walked aimlessly for a few blocks before he reached one of his speakeasies. The man at the door recognized him immediately and opened the door for him. The large, thuggish, man attempted to usher him to a table but he shrugged him away opting instead to seat himself at the bar. He sat down, wiped the rain from his face and ran a hand over his hair.

"Anything I can get you, Mr. Rothstein, sir?" a tired-looking, rather thin, young kid asked from behind the bar. Typically alcohol wasn't his thing, he'd much rather prefer a glass of milk and a slice of cake wherever he went, but tonight wasn't a typical night. He ordered his poison and buried his face in his hands as he waited for the kid to fetch it for him. The kid was quick and his drink appeared before him within minutes. A swig from the glass burned his throat as he swallowed the drink but he still felt frozen. In no time one glass became three and yet the alcohol did nothing to drown out the incessant ringing in his ears of Carolyn calling out to him, "Baby, come home."

He ordered yet another drink, only by this time his thoughts were beginning to wander. He thought about one of the times he took her out to lunch. It was such a trivial thing, really, but he was so nerve-wrecked he nearly blew it. They were sitting together at a rather popular diner; he would have taken her somewhere more lush, no price was too high when it came to her, but it was at her request they had gone there instead. She said it had been her favorite since she was a girl and so he agreed. It was crowded, a little too crowded for his liking, which only made him more nervous. It was so long ago he no longer remembered all the details clearly, but he remembered the feeling. They were splitting a drink, a milkshake, something that she had insisted he try given his fondness for sweets. He had one hand placed in his lap, the other resting on the table, tightly gripping the tall glass between him and Carolyn. She must have noticed the whiteness in his knuckles from how hard his grip around the glass was because she gently placed her hand over his and smiled at him. She never said anything about it, and neither did he, but he knew she was trying to calm him, trying to tell him everything was okay. Her smile was enough, and he felt a wave come over him as his nerves quieted and he was able to finally relax.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when he heard the bar stool next to him scratch against the floor as someone sat down next to him. He had once again had his face buried in his hands so he only gave the stranger a glance through his fingers. It wasn't much of a look, all he saw was a black coat and a rather expensive looking hat pulled low over the stranger's head, but he didn't care much anyway. The stranger meant nothing more to him than money. So long as the man there bought even one drink it was a dollar in his pocket, and after last night's loss at the tables he really needed it. He looked away from the stranger again and sighed. Pulling his hands away from his face he stared at the row of empty glasses before him for a moment before crossing his arms and placing his head down on the bar.

"Did you ever love her, did you know?" It was the stranger asking him. Their voice sounded off, yet sort of familiar, but he chalked it up to the alcohol in his system and didn't bother picking his head up. "Or did you never want to be alone?"

He thought about the question he was presented with. He didn't know how this stranger could possibly know about his situation, maybe it was simply the proper assumption to make when a man met another in a bar at a half hour til dawn, maybe the stranger wasn't even really talking to him. He didn't care, he thought about it anyway. After a few moments he had his answer.

"Yes." he answered, voice groggy from lack of sleep and the amount of booze in him. The answer could have been to either of the options the question presented him with, but he wasn't going to clarify. He didn't need to explain himself to a stranger. It didn't matter in the end, anyhow, because the answer however vague it was had been good enough for the stranger.

He heard the rustling of fabric as the stranger beside him lifted their arms off the bar and removed their hat; he heard the soft thump of the hat being placed on the bar, and then the stranger spoke again. However, this time he didn't hear the odd voice he'd heard the stranger speak in before, now he heard her voice - Carolyn's - only this time it wasn't ringing in his ears but rather it was right beside him, "Baby, come home".


End file.
